Today Is the 100th Anniversary of Insulin. Let Us Know How It’s Affected Your Life.

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Until the discovery of insulin a century ago today by two Canadian researchers who injected a pancreatic extract into a diabetic dog and watched its blood sugar drop, diabetes had been deemed fatal. Kids and adults “most often died within days to months,” Dr. Chris Feudtner of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said today in a striking portrait of the discovery’s impact. “With the advent of insulin therapy, this timeline was extended to decades.”

More than 460 million people have diabetes. The number is rapidly rising, most prevalently in lower- and middle-income populations. It’s hard to unequivocally celebrate any life-saving medicine whose demand exceeds its affordability and accessibility for the millions struggling to obtain it; the politics and economics of insulin are points of fierce criticism. (See our colleague Tim Murphy’s callout last year.) But insulin, as Feudtner says, has improved, extended, and saved countless lives. It remains “one of the leading medical miracles of the 20th century, on par with antimicrobials and cancer treatments.”

Let us know what insulin means to you and your family on a daily basis, and how much you pay for it (if you do), at recharge@motherjones.com. Also let us know, if language interests you, whether you’d say “I’m diabetic” or “I have diabetes” or if each is interchangeable.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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